GenAssist Inc., a St. Louis-based startup creating a sponge designed to provide muscle regeneration after traumatic injuries, plans to begin testing its technology on pigs after winning a federal grant.
CEO Joe Beggs said GenAssist hopes in the coming months to begin studying its technology by placing its sponges in pigs, a key step in advancing to human studies. That testing comes as GenAssist has been awarded a $275,000 small business innovation research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation.
GenAssist is developing a regenerative sponge designed to be implanted into a patient with severe muscle loss. It was created out of technology from the Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering Laboratory at Saint Louis University. It is led by founders Beggs and Gabriel Haas. Beggs, also a founder of local startup Hive Medical, was a member of St. Louis Inno's Inno Under 25 class in 2021.
GenAssist says its technology is designed to help provide muscle healing after traumatic injuries and has positioned its sponge as a medical device that could be used in military settings. The startup said it has recently been granted a patent for its technology from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Beggs said GenAssist received assistance from BioGenerator, the startup creation and investment arm of innovation hub BioSTL, in applying for its SBIR grant. GenAssist operates from the BioSTL Building in the Cortex innovation district.
With its federal funding, Beggs said GenAssist has hired an additional staff member and is working with a contract manufacturer to make a clinical-grade version of its product.
“We’re ramping up our manufacturing capabilities,” he said.
GenAssist’s research and development efforts also include teaming up with a contract research organization, Care Research of Colorado, to test its sponge in pigs. Its sponge has previously been tested in mice and rats, but Beggs said studying it in pigs will give greater insight as the startup works toward its technology being used in humans.
“Mice and rats are smaller animals. Even though we were taking out big chunks of their muscle, in gross terms, it wasn’t a large volume of muscle,” Beggs said. “Whereas in that pig, we can actually excise a very large chunk of muscle and see if the sponges still work in that kind of more natural environment. Also, pigskin is very similar to human skin and their immune system is very similar as well, so it just makes a lot of sense to put it in pigs.”
Beggs said GenAssist hopes to start testing its sponges in pigs by year’s end.
